Julie Peakman
Author & Historian
Julie Peakman is an author and historian in eighteenth-century culture and history of sexuality. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and Honorary Fellow at Birkbeck College, University of London. She is a frequent contributor to newspapers and popular magazines, as well as academic journals. She has worked on television documentaries for the BBC, Channel 4 and the Biography Channel. She is also a novelist and playwright.
My Books
Some of my books:
More
Libertine London. Sex in the Eighteenth-Century Metropolis
(2024)
Licentious Worlds. Sex & Exploitation in Global Empires
(2019)
Hitler's Island War. The Men Who Fought for Leros
(2018)
Amatory Pleasures. Explorations in C18th Sexual Culture
(2016)
Peg Plunkett. Memoirs of a Whore
(2014)
The Pleasure's All Mine. A History of Perverse Sex
(2013)
Mighty Lewd Books: The Development of Pornography in
Eighteenth-Century England
(reprinted 2012, 2003)
Emma Hamilton
(2005)
Lascivious Bodies: A Sexual History of the Eighteenth Century
(2004)
My Life & Loves
Places
Travelling, history and people are my main loves and this has led to developing many broad-ranging interests. I will be starting a page on sex & civilisation from the places I have visited.
Leros Island
Leros is one of my loves. I first visited when I was 17 years old and could not believe I had found the most wonderful place on earth. Many years later I managed to buy a peasant's hovel there and live there for part of my life.
Eighteenth-Century History
People
Meeting lots of people at various gigs has led to some interesting invitations. I have listened to Spanish bands in Masonic Lodges, run through jungles where the Viet Cong had been (not while I was there) and stayed in a couple of Maharajah's palaces.
I love the moon and the stars - and Maggie Aderin-Pocock who tells us all about exciting things happening in astronomy. I took this picture of the moon when we were on a star-gazing tour up in the mountains in La Palma.
Loves
My partner Jad Adams is also a historian, mainly working in the nineteenth-century
www.jadadams.co.uk
My Plays
The Unquiet Landscape
The Balloon Party
Facing Out: Monologue Series
My Eighteenth Century
Emma Hamilton
Peg Plunkett
Nancy Dawson
